Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 274 of 529 · 20 per page

• From Little Women (1868)

  "It's one of them horrid telegraph things, mum," she said, handling it as if she was afraid it would explode and do some damage. At the word 'telegraph', Mrs. March snatched it, read the two lines it contained, and dropped back into her chair as white as if the little paper had sent a bullet to her heart. Laurie dashed downstairs for water, while Meg and Hannah supported her, and Jo read aloud, in a frightened voice... Mrs. March: Your husband is very ill. Come at once. S. HALE Blank Hospital, Washington. How still the room was as they listened breathlessly, how strangely the day darkened outside, and how suddenly the whole world seemed to change, as the girls gathered about their mother, feeling as if all the happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them. Mrs. March was herself again directly, read the message over, and stretched out her arms to her daughters, saying, in a tone they never forgot, "I shall go at once, but it may be too late. Oh, children, children, help me to bear it!" For several minutes there was nothing but the sound of sobbing in the room, mingled with broken words of comfort, tender assurances of help, and hopeful whispers that died away in tears. Poor Hannah was the first to recover, and with unconscious wisdom she set all the rest a good example, for with her, work was panacea for most afflictions. "The Lord keep the dear man! I won't waste no time a-cryin', but git your things ready right away, mum," she said heartily, as she wiped her face on her apron, gave her mistress a warm shake of the hand with her own hard one, and went away to work like three women in one. "She's right, there's no time for tears now. Be calm, girls, and let me think." They tried to be calm, poor things, as their mother sat up, looking pale but steady, and put away her grief to think and plan for them. "Where's Laurie?" she asked presently, when she had collected her thoughts and decided on the first duties to be done. "Here, ma'am. Oh, let me do something!" cried the boy, hurrying from the next room whither he had withdrawn, feeling that their first sorrow was too sacred for even his friendly eyes to see. "Send a telegram saying I will come at once. The next train goes early in the morning. I'll take that." "What else? The horses are ready. I can go anywhere, do anything," he said, looking ready to fly to the ends of the earth. "Leave a note at Aunt March's.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  And also waves of Light spreading out at the edges of the universe.” She paused and closed her eyes to tune in; the rest of us were quiet, responding like Pavlov’s dogs to the signal that we should sit in reverence while Limori had a private conversation with God. “I see one dark cloud in the sky, though.” Her eyes remained closed while she shared what she was seeing. “Do you see that too, Gary?” Gary closed his eyes too and I felt a thrill of excitement at being able to watch these two people whom I believed were spiritual masters work. “Yes,” Gary said, “I see it. It’s dark, almost steel grey, with black flecks all through it.” “What is it?” Limori asked from her seat. And then, after a short pause, “Or rather, who is it?” Now I was afraid. My stomach started to churn with a thousand butterflies and I took deep, cleansing breaths, as quietly as possible, to try to calm myself and stay focused and clear. I closed my eyes, as the others had done, and simply tried to be blank inside. No thoughts, no fear, no assumptions about what was going on. I tried to receive information from Spirit but mostly I just saw blankness on the backs of my eyelids. Not that I would have admitted that to anyone in the room. “It’s someone close to you.” Gary said. Shit , I thought. It’s me. Shit, shit, shit. I’ve screwed up already and I’ve only been living here a couple of weeks . What could I have done? I quickly scanned back over the past few days; have I had any judgments? Have I spoken or even thought something that is not The Truth? Have I been in my ego? I couldn’t think of anything specific but I could always have missed something. God sees everything after all, so if I’d done something wrong I wouldn’t be able to escape it. My butterflies worked themselves up into a frenzy but outwardly I remained calm. I continued to breathe with my eyes closed, not ready to give myself up until called upon. “Yes,” Limori said, “that’s what I’ve been seeing, too. My energy is being interfered with. Azeen won’t show me who it is, though. Will he show you, Gary?” (By asking Gary to do this, Limori was making him complicit in what was about to occur. It was a technique she used with all of us, but especially with those very high up in her hierarchy, like Gary, Alice and later Michael and even me, to a certain extent. At the time, it seemed as though Limori was mentoring us. Being with her when she asked people like Gary to do these things felt like she was encouraging them to reach for the spiritual heights that she had supposedly gained. But looking back I see that it was another clever way to ensure that we were closely tied to her.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  We were always on guard and braced against allowing the Dark into our hearts and minds. We were taught that darkness or negative energy was something one could catch from another person, like the flu. Thus was born an unspoken necessity to shun, to place those who were deemed to have negative energy emotionally and socially at a distance so as not to catch their darkness. Shunning was always initiated because of spiritual work that Limori had done with someone in the group. At a workshop, or on a Wednesday or Thursday night, Limori would rip someone apart for the negative energy they were bringing into the group or for the lousy job they were doing for God. She would often declare that the person in question needed to somehow “change their energy” so that they were no longer negative. In the previous chapter I outlined examples of both Susan and me receiving this type of treatment. The after-effect was that the rest of the members of the group would pull back from the offending party and essentially shun him or her until a time when Limori would declare that the offence had passed and the person was “back in the Light.” These reversals of fortune could be dramatic; someone could go from being shunned and an outcast to being called to fly to Hawaii or Arizona, or wherever Limori was at the time, welcomed with warmth and generosity, brought back into God’s good graces and romanced with jewellery and clothes and, most importantly, Limori’s favour. For those of us who were not on the highest rungs of the group hierarchy, the return to an acceptable status would be less dramatic, but no less profound. Limori might be talking to Michael or Gary on the phone one day and say, “Karen has done a lot of good work lately and her energy is clear again.” Gary or Michael would pass this kernel of truth onto the offending person, word would trickle out through the group and the outcast would once again be back in everyone’s good graces. The shunning by the group was most dramatic at Wolf’s Den, where the person who was being shunned would be forced to live separately from the rest of the “family” and not be allowed into the lodge for meals or connection with anyone. In the Vancouver group, shunning was much less dramatic than this, but no less effective. As a group we would treat an offending person as if they weren’t in the room. We would talk to that person only when necessary. They would not be invited to social gatherings because of their negative energy. It felt like being absent while present. When the person’s offensive status had been removed by word from Limori, or by more subtle indications such as her inviting the offending person to “tune in to Spirit,” then connection and warmth toward the person would be restored and life for that person would return to normal.

• From Jesus and His Jewish Influences (2015)

  109 Lecture 17—The Reign of Herod the Great 0XUGHURI$ULVWREXOXV,,, ƔAlexandra then contacted Cleopatra in Egypt to enlist her help in having Mark Antony force Herod to appoint her son to the post. Cleopatra was a threat to Herod from the very beginning of his reign because she coveted Herod’s kingdom. Of course, by this point, Cleopatra was involved with Mark Antony. Ɣ$OH[DQGUD¶VVWUDWHJ\ZRUNHG²DW¿UVW$QWRQ\VKRZHGDQLQWHUHVW in Aristobulus III, and Herod capitulated and replaced Hananel with Aristobulus III, who was only 17 years old. Aristobulus III WRRNRI¿FHSUHVLGLQJDVKLJKSULHVWRYHUWKHKROLGD\RI6XNNRW the Feast of Tabernacles. According to Josephus, Aristobulus was well-loved by the people: “And so there arose among the people an impulsive feeling of affection for him .... They called out to him good wishes mingled with prayers.” ƔHerod’s worst fears were realized. Herod himself was insecure about his position as king of Judea because he was not descended from the Hasmoneans. He was afraid of the support that the Hasmoneans had among the Jewish population. When Aristobulus inspired a wave of affection and support from the people, Herod reacted. ƔJosephus tells the rest of the story: “For although he had given him the high priesthood at the age of 17, he killed him quickly after he had conferred that dignity upon him.” What’s more, four years later, in 31 B.C., Herod also had Hyrcanus II put to death. This left Mariamne the pivotal Hasmonean in Herod’s personal life. &OHRSDWUDDQG0DUN$QWRQ\ Ɣ&OHRSDWUD²VSHFL¿FDOO\&OHRSDWUD9,,²ZDVDGHVFHQGDQWRIWKH Ptolemies, whose kingdom had also been absorbed by Rome. In 37 or 36 B.C., Cleopatra married Mark Antony. At this point, Mark Antony was administering the eastern half of the Mediterranean on behalf of Rome. He set up his base of operations in Alexandria in Egypt, and that’s where he met and fell in love with Cleopatra.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  One of the unique human aspects of sex is our association of sex with fear, sex with power, sex with pain. And with death. We fear sex in a psychic way, which is often the way we desire it. (Certainly that’s how the romantic ideal has told us to desire sex.) This meld of fear and desire, writes William Irwin Thompson, is what gives human sexuality its obsessive quality. “Gone is the casual ten-second coitus of the animal; present for good is the sexualization of human culture, and an association of erotic excitement with a thrilling sense of danger.” Sexuality, not sex, is the new thing, the human addition. Sexual forms “unfold like the petals of shrapnel in an explosion. Sexuality explodes in every direction and will light upon any available appendage, orifice, or symbolic article.…” There’s no safe place for the sexual human, no solid barricade behind which we can hide from sex, no defense so strong that the possibility of intimacy can’t slip through. Sometimes I long for that release of the ego into the other, my lover, and I can’t let go no matter how I try. But I remember more than once longing to be left intact, and being released against my will, like slipping at the top of an icy slide and knowing there’s no way to stop until I come to the ground. Where did the fear begin? Thompson might say it was the result of the radical cultural changes that followed the end of visible estrus and the resulting changes in mating and family patterns. The end of estrus completely changed the meaning of sex, which ceased being simply a vehicle for sperm to meet egg. Because we had to engage in sex all the time in order to “catch” the egg, the nature of sex changed, took on new qualities. What began as a biological drive ended, if it has ended at all, as something very different. Desire became constant, and the constancy is what we fear. It never goes away for long. So humans learned to ritualize sex and formalize sexual relationships, began to tell stories about sex—explanations needed to incorporate shifting and unpredictable urges into our lives. We’ve been doing that for a long time. When sexual acts became symbols, romance was born. If sex is a problem for me, it’s an unsolvable problem, repeating, immortal. Since I can’t make sex go away, I can only hope to find out how to live with it, how to make it be not a problem. That makes facing fear even more important than facing shame; it means paying attention to my self, my desires and concerns, a lot more than to the voices and concerns of those around me.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Nobody wants to hear my story.” Rufus looked at him. “Don’t let me start talking to you about my profession.” “Things are tough all over,” said Vivaldo. Rufus looked out over the sun-filled park. “Nobody ever has to take up a collection to bury managers or agents,” Rufus said. “But they sweeping musicians up off the streets every day.” “Never mind,” said Leona, gently, “they ain’t never going to sweep you up off the streets.” She put her hand on his head and stroked it. He reached up and took her hand away. There was a silence. Then Cass rose. “I hate to break this up, but I must go home. One of my neighbors took the kids to the zoo, but they’re probably getting back by now. I’d better rescue Richard.” “How are your kids, Cass?” Rufus asked. “Much you care. It would serve you right if they’d forgotten all about you. They’re fine. They’ve got much more energy than their parents.” Vivaldo said, “I’m going to walk Cass home. What do you think you’ll be doing later?” He felt a dull fear and a dull resentment, almost as though Vivaldo were deserting him. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess we’ll go along home——” “I got to go uptown later, Rufus,” said Leona. “I ain’t got nothing to go to work in tomorrow.” Cass held out her hand to Leona. “It was nice meeting you. Make Rufus bring you by to see us one day. ” “Well, it was sure nice meeting you. I been meeting some real nice people lately.” “Next time,” said Cass, “we’ll go off and have a drink by ourselves someplace, without all these men .” They laughed together. “I really would like that.” “Suppose I pick you up at Benno’s,” Rufus said to Vivaldo, “around ten-thirty?” “Good enough. Maybe we’ll go across town and pick up on some jazz?” “Good.” “So long, Leona. Glad to have met you.” “Me, too. Be seeing you real soon.” “Give my regards,” said Rufus, “to Richard and the kids, and tell them I’m coming by.” “I’ll do that. Make sure you do come by, we’d dearly love to see you.” Cass and Vivaldo started slowly in the direction of the arch. The bright-red, setting sun burned their silhouettes against the air and crowned the dark head and the golden one. Rufus and Leona stood and watched them; when they were under the arch, they turned and waved. “We better be making tracks,” said Rufus. “I guess so.” They started back through the park. “You got some real nice friends, Rufus. You’re lucky. They’re real fond of you. They think you’re somebody.” “You think they do?” “I know they do.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Years later, I would learn that in this pivotal moment what I had done was challenge the doctrine over person criteria of thought reform. Once again, I’ll reference Dr. Robert Lifton to explain criteria number seven: If one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question – it is always “turned around” on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly. The underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or human experience and one must subject one’s experience to that “truth.” The experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt. One is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one’s own evil.”1 I had been bumping into this criteria for membership in the group for years, and would continue to do so for some time, but without realizing it. My perpetual cycle of fear of Limori’s methods and guilt about that fear was exactly what is being described above. I had always been afraid of Limori and deep down wanted to challenge her methods and question the supposed benefits of ostracizing, yelling at and abusing group members, but knew that any questions I had would be turned back around to me and my value and commitment to God would be questioned. We had always been told we were free to challenge her but, in practice, we were not. The message always came back that to question her, even by proxy via Michael, meant that the questioner was flawed, evil and unable to see The Truth. The rest of that year was easier. We didn’t see Limori again and, although I was increasingly conflicted about the group and Limori’s teaching methods and philosophies, I kept that to myself. My journals reflect some of that conflict but I didn’t dare express a word of it to anyone and am surprised, frankly, that I allowed myself to even think some of the things I was thinking. For example, in November 1999, I wrote, “This spiritual journey is mine. It’s not Limori’s or Michael’s, it’s mine. I’ve always tended to give my power away. I’ve been on the path thus far because I felt I needed Limori to approve of me and I needed to be a good girl. Now I feel more in charge of my own life, more responsible for myself, less afraid of Limori.” The part about being less afraid of Limori was mostly bluster, because as we will shortly see, even being in the room when she was on the phone would send me into fits of fearful angst, but it is obvious that I was tentatively exploring the idea that my relationship with God was not Limori’s responsibility, nor should she (or anyone) have dominion over that relationship.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  As ever, I desperately wanted her approval but I felt that whatever I did seemed to only increase her disapproval of me. I tripped over my words and thoughts whenever I was in her presence and could barely make eye contact with her. The more obsequious I became the colder she seemed to become to me, which only increased my anxiety and fear. I resolved through the Christmas break to get a grip on myself. I was alone at the house for a few days, and then spent a few days around Christmas Day with my mother and stepfather in Vancouver. To my disappointment, when the New Year dawned and I returned to the routine of living at the house and Limori and her entourage returned from Hawaii, I was as fearful as ever. Maybe more. Finally, one day in late February, the situation broke. On a sunny Sunday I made arrangements to go for a walk in Stanley Park with two friends from the meditation circle. I made this arrangement ostensibly to spend time with friends, but my true motivation was simply to be out of the house while Limori was in it. I was beside myself with fear and self-loathing and, as often as I could, I needed to escape the pressure of being near her. As my friends and I walked around the seawall I was desperate to share my anxiety and tortured state of mind with them but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was so riddled with fear that I thought if I shared what I was feeling, I would hit Limori with my negative energy, even from this distance. When I returned home later in the afternoon, Lisa was in the living room, visiting with Limori. I went to my bedroom and hung up my coat and, as I walked back down the hallway to the kitchen, Limori called me in to see her. I could immediately intuit that I was in for it. The look on her face was thunderous and Lisa was looking smug, a clear sign if ever there was one that I was doomed. Limori asked me to take a seat and then my own little workshop began. She began by bringing up the fact that I was not comfortable in the home and that I was avoiding her. (This was true.) Then she accused me of complaining about her to the friends I had just returned from seeing. “I haven’t!” I said to her. This was one thing I was absolutely sure of, although I didn’t have the courage or the wherewithal to tell her that I had wanted to talk about her but stopped myself because I was too afraid. “Azeen says that you are not blending in fully with the family that lives here. You are keeping yourself separate,” she said (which meant that I was keeping myself separate from God, a disastrous spiritual crime).

• From Another Country (1962)

  He walked in without knocking. Rufus was standing near the door, holding a knife. “Is that for me or for you? Or were you planning to cut yourself a hunk of salami?” He forced himself to stand where he was and to look directly at Rufus. “I was thinking about putting it into you, motherfucker.” But he had not moved. Vivaldo slowly let out his breath. “Well, put it down. If I ever saw a poor bastard who needed his friends, you’re it.” They watched each other for what seemed like a very long time and neither of them moved. They stared into each other’s eyes, each, perhaps, searching for the friend each remembered. Vivaldo knew the face before him so well that he had ceased, in a way, to look at it and now his heart turned over to see what time had done to Rufus. He had not seen before the fine lines in the forehead, the deep, crooked line between the brows, the tension which soured the lips. He wondered what the eyes were seeing—they had not been seeing it years before. He had never associated Rufus with violence, for his walk was always deliberate and slow, his tone mocking and gentle: but now he remembered how Rufus played the drums. He moved one short step closer, watching Rufus, watching the knife. “Don’t kill me, Rufus,” he heard himself say. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m only trying to help.” The bathroom door was still open and the light still burned. The bald kitchen light burned mercilessly down on the two orange crates and the board which formed the kitchen table, and on the uncovered wash and bathtub. Dirty clothes lay flung in a corner. Beyond them, in the dim bedroom, two suitcases, Rufus’ and Leona’s, lay open in the middle of the floor. On the bed was a twisted gray sheet and a thin blanket. Rufus stared at him. He seemed not to believe Vivaldo; he seemed to long to believe him. His face twisted, he dropped the knife, and fell against Vivaldo, throwing his arms around him, trembling. Vivaldo led him into the bedroom and they sat down on the bed. “Somebody’s got to help me,” said Rufus at last, “somebody’s got to help me. This shit has got to stop.” “Can’t you tell me about it? You’re screwing up your life. And I don’t know why.” Rufus sighed and fell back, his arms beneath his head, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know, either. I don’t know up from down. I don’t know what I’m doing no more.” The entire building was silent. The room in which they sat seemed very far from the life breathing all around them, all over the island.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  That was a deeply radical and rebellious thought, which defied everything I’d been taught by Limori up to this point, and I was afraid while I was writing it. I was embattled that fall, my cult self and my essential self duelling it out for supremacy inside me. In late September or early October 1999, I began asking God to please show me or tell me the truth. “Not Limori’s truth,” I would say out loud during my prayers at night, “I want to know THE truth. Your truth, God. Is this path with Limori the right one? If it is then I’ll accept that, but I want to know for sure, from You. Show me. Get through to me somehow. I want to know Your truth.” Every night for weeks I asked this with an urgency that bordered on desperation. The bright side of that summer and fall was that Michael and I were blissfully happy; after nearly ten years of talking about how much we loved one another we were now able to express it to ourselves and to our friends and family. The relief was enormous and the relationship itself was even better than I’d imagined. The feeling of being soulfully connected to Michael didn’t go away, no matter how much time we spent together. My new personal assistant business was growing and it was especially gratifying to have Michael’s help and counsel about that. It was another point of connection for us; we both had an entrepreneurial spirit and now I was able to nurture mine, and receive his encouragement, as I learned how to be self-employed. The morning of December 30, 1999, dawned crisp and clear and freeze-your-nose-hair cold. I pressed myself against Michael’s back and wrapped my right arm around him, spooning him for warmth. My state of mind was much the same as it had been when we’d gone to sleep the night before: confused, angry but not admitting it, frightened and dreading the next few days I’d be spending here at Limori’s resort, under Limori’s thumb, with Limori inserting herself between my beloved Michael and me. But I tried to suppress those thoughts and feelings and focus on being on vacation, although this was a far, far cry from my experience in Hawaii, earlier that year. The outside temperature alone should have given me a clue that I was a million miles away from avocado trees and peace. The phone call from Limori came shortly after lunch. Michael excused himself to Matthew and Lisa’s bedroom. The long phone cord snaked under the closed door and remained there for most of the afternoon. I spent the ensuing hours, while Michael talked to Limori, drifting around the lodge, trying to feel comfortable but losing that battle. I knew instinctively that Michael and Limori were talking about me; it made sense, especially after what had happened the day before. And my body once again knew that something was wrong.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  “Do you know where he is?” “I think he’s in the living room.” “Thanks.” I went through the swing doors that divided the kitchen and living room with my heart in my throat and tears threatening behind my eyes. Michael was seated in one of the dining room chairs in front of the fireplace, reading a book about hockey that his brother had given him for Christmas. He looked up when he saw me approaching, and a rush of thoughts and feelings crowded together inside me, jostling for dominance. I couldn’t believe that he could sit so calmly, reading, as though nothing was happening. I felt ashamed about how afraid of him I felt. He had gone from my closest ally to someone I was petrified of in a few short hours. And his face was so calm, like he had not a thought in the world besides what he was reading in his book. I felt frightened of that too; his expression was so eerily calm that it was like he wasn’t even there. Our eyes met and I saw that his seemed as hard and vacant as glass. It was as though all that we’d shared and every intimacy we’d experienced together was erased from his memory. Just like that, I was the enemy. Someone he now needed to manage and instruct and, most important of all, keep at a distance. Rather than provide me with any hope of reconciliation, or a shred of compassion, he took a firm grasp on the knife lodged in my heart and twisted it. “I’m not allowed to hug you,” he said, when I reached a distance of two or three feet from his chair. “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” I knew from years of indoctrination that this meant my energy was so bad, so dark and devilish, that if I touched Michael, or anyone for that matter, I would contaminate them, the same as if I’d physically been covered in tar. “I’m leaving now, so I guess we’ll talk when you get home.” “Yes,” he said, and that was it. Awkward silence. “Okay, then,” I said. I didn’t know what to do with my body. I realized I was holding my hands at waist height, intertwining and unwinding my fingers with nervous energy. I took half a step back and turned slightly back toward the kitchen. “See you . . . I guess.” “‘Bye,” he said. I walked back toward the kitchen doors, the tears in my eyes threatening to spill over, but I refused to wipe at them until I was out of Michael’s sight. I waited, alone, in the kitchen foyer until Matthew was ready to drive me to the airfield to catch my flight. He talked as we drove and chuckled at me again, as he had earlier in the day.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  I was questioning the one sacred premise that Limori had taught us in so many ways never to question. “Is Limori doing God’s work or not?” I asked myself. “What do I believe?” I sat there, quiet and afraid, and after a few minutes realized that for me, the bottom line was this: What I believe in, at the deepest parts of myself, are love and compassion. It seems to me that Limori is teaching us to act without those two values, though she talks about them. If she IS representing God on Earth, then that means that God does not value love and compassion. I am beginning to recognize that I value these things enough that I cannot operate without them. Limori’s values and my values are not lining up, and I don’t think I can be a hypocrite and continue to follow her while that is going on. I took another deep breath and faced the most terrifying aspect of this conundrum: That means that I am willing to choose love and compassion over Limori’s god. If she turns out to be right, and I am turning my back on actual God, then so be it. I can’t live without love and compassion any longer. I’m paraphrasing, of course, as I recount this moment. It was as much felt as thought. I honestly believed at the time that I was turning my back on God, but the pressure from within myself to resolve the contradictions I was beginning to perceive in Limori’s teaching was strong enough to make me willing to try and resolve my conflict. When this moment was over and I knew I had come to what was for me the centre of the matter, I opened my eyes and took another huge breath— and actually felt lighter. A few tears of relief trickled down my face and slowly my hands stopped trembling and my body began to relax slightly in the chair. I was still afraid, because now I was living without the doctrine I had held so dear for so long, but it was a different kind of fear. It was the fear of the unknown, rather than the fear that had been created because another human being was in control of my life. For the first time in a very long time I was free. Part IIIIt Ain’t Pretty but it’s RealAlthough the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. —Helen Keller The long road of recoveryA fter having made my decision to leave Limori’s cult, I shared my decision with the group at our next meeting and was met with the indifference that I’d suspected I would receive. I was, after all, an outcast at that point; the fact that I dared to speak out loud to the group was the most energy-charged moment of that evening.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Then he heard the wail of trombones and clarinets and a steady, enraged beating on the drums. They were playing a blues he had never heard before, they were filling the earth with a sound so dreadful that he knew he could not bear it. Where was Ida? she could help him. But he felt rough hands on him and he looked down into Rufus’ distorted and vindictive face. Go on up , said Rufus. I’m helping you up. Go up! Rufus’ hands pushed and pushed and soon Vivaldo stood, higher than Rufus had ever stood, on the wintry bridge, looking down on death. He knew that this death was what Rufus most desired. He tried to look down, to beg Rufus for mercy, but he could not move without falling off the wall, or falling on the glass. From far away, far beyond this flood, he saw Ida, on a sloping green meadow, walking alone. The sun was beautiful on her blue-black hair and on her Aztec brow, and gathered in a dark, glinting pool at the hollow of her throat. She did not look toward him, walked in a measured way, looking down at the ground; yet, he felt that she saw him, was aware of him standing on the cruel wall, and waited, in collusion with her brother, for his death. Then Rufus came hurtling from the air, impaling himself on the far, spiked fence which bounded the meadow. Ida did not look: she waited. Vivaldo watched Rufus’ blood run down, bright red over the black spikes, into the green meadow. He tried to shout, but no words came; tried to reach out to Ida and fell heavily on his hands and knees on the rearing, uplifted glass. He could not bear the pain; yet, he felt again the random, voluptuous tug. He felt entirely helpless and more terrified than ever. But there was pleasure in it. He writhed against the glass. Don’t kill me, Rufus. Please. Please. I love you . Then, to his delight and confusion, Rufus lay down beside him and opened his arms. And the moment he surrendered to this sweet and overwhelming embrace, his dream, like glass, shattered, he heard the rain at the windows, returned, violently, into his body, became aware of his odor and the odor of Eric, and found that it was Eric to whom he clung, who clung to him. Eric’s lips were against Vivaldo’s neck and chest. Vivaldo hoped that he was dreaming still. A terrible sorrow entered him, because he was dreaming and because he was awake. Immediately, he felt that he had created his dream in order to create this opportunity; he had brought about something that he had long desired. He was frightened and then he was angry—at Eric or at himself? he did not know—and started to pull away.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  The idea that somebody like Jacob might get something out of Catholic liturgy without accepting the creed that supported it was novel to me. As far as I was concerned, religion consisted essentially of belief, and now that I could no longer subscribe to a creed, I could not be a religious person. And yet all around me, at the same time as people were casting off the trammels of institutional Christianity, they were turning to alternative forms of faith. The Harts’ two older sons, Adam and Charlie, for example, were both leading lights in Britain’s counterculture. Charlie lived in a commune near Cambridge and had formed a pop group. Adam, who was my exact contemporary, was more radical, and regarded even the life of a performing musician as a cop-out. He lived in a commune in Northumberland in a house bought for the community by his father, and had no productive work. Their ideals, expressed in such typically sixties slogans as “Do what you feel,” “Let it all hang out,” “Go with the flow,” and “Do your own thing,” were, on the face of it, the antithesis of the ideals of my convent, and yet there was also a similarity. Both boys had rejected the utilitarianism of their parents, yet, although they had no theological beliefs, they had embarked on what in other ways amounted to a religious quest. They had turned their backs on society, were seeking what gave life intrinsic value, and had rejected money and worldly success, just as I had when I had entered my convent. They had no time for institutional faith or the authoritarian structures of Christianity, but practiced transcendental meditation in the hope of changing their thought structures. Other postwar Britons also sought personal transformation; they wanted to be “somewhere else.” Some went off to Kathmandu; others merely took drug-induced trips. Even the Beatles, who had outraged Christians in the United States by declaring—correctly—that they were more popular in Britain than Jesus Christ, had spent months with a guru in India. People were beginning to experiment with new ways of being religious. I could not see it at the time, but by asking me to take Jacob to Blackfriars, Jenifer was in tune with this trend. She understood that Jacob needed not a creed, but spirituality and rituals that could bring him a measure of peace. But for me, religion without belief was a contradiction in terms, and I had very little hope that the church, which had brought me to the brink of despair, could help Jacob to make sense of his frightening world. Moon rises!’ ” Jacob greeted me as usual, rushing along the narrow corridor to the kitchen. “ ‘Moon rises at twelve forty-nine a.m.’! Karen! Where are we going this morning?” “We’re going to—” I waited for him to finish the sentence. “Blackfriars!” Jacob roared with evident delight. He certainly seemed enthusiastic. “Do I look smart?”

• From Iraq's Secret Sex Trade

  One of our reporters went undercover in Kadhimiya with a secret camera. If discovered, he risks being detained by one of Iraq's feared Shia militias. We're concealing his identity. When I arrived, I was really scared. First checkpoint was really scary because I had a secret camera. If they found this, no way I can run away. Only clerics can run marriage offices here. While many go through years of religious education, it's possible in Iraq to become a cleric with little formal training. Posing as a potential client, our reporter arranged to meet several clerics. I just went to many of these offices and started asking them if you do a temporary pleasure marriage. Some of them they said yes. One of them was Sheikh Hussein. This is Hussein al-Musawi. His office is opposite the main shrine. He has authorization from the Ministry of Shia Affairs, and a licence to conduct marriages from the Ministry of Justice. My cover story was I am Iraqi, living in London coming to Baghdad for a short trip. Our reporter pretended he'd met a girl, and wanted to have sex with her. He asked if the cleric would do a pleasure marriage. The cleric said it was better not to have a written contract. Without a contract, he said, it's easier to cover your tracks. The cleric was giving advice on how to use a girl for sex, and then get rid of her. We had evidence they said this but to see it for myself was really shocking. I couldn't believe he was telling me have sex with her and just leave her in the street, basically. His services came at a price. Seeking to understand more about mut'ah marriage, we approached more than 20 senior Shia clerics to take part in this program. Only one agreed to talk to us on camera, Ghaith Tamimi. In Iraq, he'd been a high ranking Shia cleric. But he started speaking out against the clerical establishment. After receiving death threats, he's now living in exile in London. Ghaith told me this cleric was breaking Islamic law, and his advice could put a woman in danger. If she were caught with a man, she risked being charged with prostitution. Despite being illegal in Iraq, we found pleasure marriage was widely available in Kadhimiya. Out of 10 clerics we spoke to, 8 said they performed them. One such cleric was Sayyid Raad. Our reporter met him outside the main shrine and went with him to his nearby office. Raad said he had two offices in Kadhimiya, and employed four other clerics. Our reporter saw his licence to conduct marriages from the Ministry of Justice. His title, Sayyid, means he claims descent from the prophet Mohammed. He agreed to do a pleasure marriage if our reporter brought a girl to him. Our undercover reporter met him again in an upmarket shopping center. Our reporter said he'd found a girl and now wanted to do a pleasure marriage.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  I had been buffetted with so many emotions and contradictory thoughts for the couple of weeks since the break-up that I felt like I was drowning most of the time. The calmness and support I felt from Mary were a welcome respite from the tornado in my head and body. We met a couple more times in the following few weeks and then, at the end of one session, she gently suggested that I might want to come in to see her every week (instead of every other week) because of the intensity of what I was going through. I agreed even although I was in a precarious place financially; my personal assistant business was less than a year old and I was deeply in debt and seemed to be sliding further that way with each passing month. I had a few steady clients and was gaining more all the time, but building the business had been financially challenging even before my life went to hell and was now proving to be even more so. For the next year or so I would use a line of credit to finance my visits to Mary, which drove the financially responsible part of my brain completely berserk, but in hindsight it was the best money I ever spent. Interestingly, not once, not ever, did Mary use the word cult in my presence. I don’t know how soon she realized that I was in a thought-reform situation, but at some point it must have become obvious to a professional familiar with the darker sides of human nature. Yet she never, ever, attempted to influence my decision-making process with her opinion of what was going on. She simply listened and mirrored to me some of what I was feeling and asked gentle but important questions that required me to reflect on what I was really feeling, rather than on what I felt I was supposed to be feeling. It is a testament to her skill as a therapist and her nature as a human being that I gradually felt safe enough to begin to think and voice things that would have been considered heresy in the group’s eyes. I remember that my feelings gradually progressed from fear of even thinking about the things that were coming up for me, to tentative acceptance that yes, I was actually thinking something that Limori would disapprove of, to a tremulous willingness to share those thoughts with Mary, to eventual feelings of rebellion. Eventually, after voicing something like “I do feel sad that Limori made Michael break up with me. It doesn’t seem right somehow,” I started to think “HA! I thought that thought and even said it out loud and the world didn’t explode.” And then I’d wonder, “What does that mean?

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  Freud said boys are frightened when they see a woman’s flat genitalia; they think women have been castrated. Klaus Theweleit says the real fear is of the “castrating potential” of the vagina. “For whatever it can take in, it can easily keep for itself.” The vagina is the Medusa’s head, writhing, snaky, poisonous. “How did all of those phallic forms find their way onto the Medusa’s head?” Theweleit asks. “Not because the head was missing something, but because it had retained something: all of those pricks that tried to suppress female potency.” Theweleit describes the rifle women of the European wars who castrated their dead enemies and hung the genitalia from their belts. He compares them to the women of Sparta who rode naked on horseback into battle, to all wild fighting women whose fierce hatred of the enemy spurs them to bloody victory. Women who seem far more horrible to men than male soldiers who do the same things to each other or to innocent women. The shrieking goddesses become the Virgin Mary when men get hold of religion, and aggressive women become either fiends or seducers. The Italian curse puttana la madonna means “whore mother of God.” And once again, Adam. After his fall, Adam avoided sex for 130 years, but all the while he was tormented by wet dreams and tortured by succubi who stole his sperm to make demons. After God’s unfortunate experience with Lilith, he tried to make another woman, in front of Adam. But Adam was disgusted by the sight—the blood, bones, and guts involved. When she was done, he wouldn’t touch her, and, nameless, she disappeared from the record. So men have always retained a shaky, often unconscious anxiety about women, especially women’s interior mysteries, their physical connection between the world and their viscerae. Eve eats, and becomes a real woman, and then Adam can’t resist. Male desire for women isn’t the problem. The problem is that women incite desire. Instead of ritual circumcision, girls have ritual clitoridectomies. The cultures who practice genital mutilation call it the rite of becoming a woman, but also freely admit it’s an attempt to stop sexual pleasure in women. Female sexuality is so dangerous, it must be surgically removed if possible. Like unnecessary hysterectomies, liposuction, and breast implants, clitoridectomies are a violent form of male fright. None of them fix the problem of the vagina, but they do injure and weaken women, they interrupt the aggressive flow of women’s desire.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Marriages began to dissolve at an astonishing rate for those group members whose spouses did not attend. It was a powerful strategy and one that worked very well for Limori, for once someone had left their spouse they were even more strongly bound to her, their guru. Another way that Limori created an environment of “us versus them” was to demonize those who left the group. Leaving was the worst-case scenario, from a spiritual perspective, according to Limori. Whenever anyone did leave the group, the event actually ended up working in Limori’s favour, because she could take the opportunity to emphasize to those of us who remained that it was her group and her group alone that was working for God. When referring to a departed member Limori would shrug her shoulders and sigh. “That’s his choice,” she would say, “but he is making things awfully difficult for himself. He’ll be back when he’s had enough pain.” Or, “She just couldn’t face The Truth. Her ego is fully in charge now. She will regret the decision to leave, maybe not immediately but eventually.” Each time someone left the group, Limori would respond by continuing to weave this spell of “us versus them.” I slowly grew to believe that the only way to serve God was to stay in the group. I absorbed the message that to leave the group was to turn my back on God; anyone who walked away from Limori and her group was walking into the dark and dangerous existence of those who served only their ego and, therefore, the Devil. This belief was reinforced much more strongly in a few years when a couple of members who had been very close to Limori took their leave. She declared that they would be dead within six months because of their refusal to serve God and their choice to serve the Devil. Interestingly, when these types of predictions were proven wrong – when we bumped into a ex-member on the streets of Vancouver, say, or heard through the grapevine that someone had moved or married or started a new business and, therefore, was not in fact dead – Limori had us so well trained that no one ever confronted her about her inaccuracy. She achieved this by making anyone who departed into He Who Shall Not Be Named. To bring up the name of a former member of the group would be to bring “bad energy” into the group. On the rare occasions that someone made the mistake of doing this, Limori and Alice would clutch their stomachs and roll their eyes and describe how “black” the energy in the room had become and how sick this was making them, simply hearing the person’s name. Therefore, we learned very quickly never to refer to anyone who had left the group and certainly never to question the fact that Limori’s prediction of debilitation and death for this individual had not come true.

• From Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2008)

  Lecture Six The Hasidim of Medieval Germany Please be advised that parts of this lecture contain some explicit discussion of sexual matters and may be unsuitable for children. Scope: Life for Jews in the Christendom of medieval Europe was not easy. For Jews in Germany from 1150–1250, dedication to the keeping of Torah was particularly perilous, because Christian Crusade fever could extend itself easily to Jewish neighbors. In these constrained circumstances and under the threat of persecution, a form of mysticism developed that appealed even to Jews who were not great scholars. The Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Devout) affirmed the centrality of Torah and had connections with the earlier Merkabah tradition but was characterized by commitment to a deep personal piety that eschewed messianic speculation and emphasized altruistic love as the essence of obedience to God. Outline I. This lecture explores a form of Jewish Mysticism that is quieter, more grounded in common life, less speculative, and more rooted in the heart than the Merkabah tradition—the mysticism of the Hasidim in medieval Germany. A. In the period of the ascendance of Christendom in Europe, Christianity pervaded all social and political structures, and various laws ensured that Jews remained separate within society and, thus, at risk. 1. Jews were not legally able to own land, and in a feudal society based in landowning, this meant that their livelihood was restricted to trade and finance. 2. Economically, therefore, Jews were both necessary (Christians were forbidden to practice usury) and resented. B. Although there were moments of cooperation (as between the biblical scholars Rashi and Hugh of St. Victor in the 11th century), the dominant atmosphere was hostile and oppressive. 1. Popular anti-Semitism, fed by Christian preaching, broke out in times of stress, as in the First Crusade (1096–1099). 26 ©2008 The Teaching Company.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Much to my amazement, his obsequiousness continued for the rest of the afternoon. After lunch, we moved out into an atrium just off the lobby of the hotel. There were several wing-backed chairs and a couch, where the six of us sat for the next couple of hours. Limori sat in one of the chairs and Michael sat to her left, on the seat closest to her. He was soaking her into his every pore. I could tell that he’d have been happy if the afternoon lasted four days. I, on the other hand, could not get out of there fast enough. Limori and Michael talked about the people in the Vancouver group and she commented on everyone’s energy and whether it was favourable or not or if they were in their ego or not. Limori referred to Mildred and for the first time ever said that her energy was not very good these days and that Michael should be cautious about being around her. To me, Limori said that negative energies were trying to reach Michael through me and that I should be very cautious, particularly about getting pregnant. “Whatever birth control you’re using,” she said, “I’d double it. These energies are trying to plant a negative baby inside you, and they know that this would be one way that they could disrupt Michael.” With this one comment, Limori elevated Michael in God’s hierarchy by emphasizing that he was so important that the Dark was trying to attack him, while simultaneously keeping me in a state of fear, self-doubt and self-loathing because negative energies were trying to work through me to harm Michael. She paused, listening to her guides, and then said, “For a while, your fear of losing Michael prevented him from reaching the Masters. You’d better get a grip on that fear.” This comment about Michael not being able to reach the Masters was exactly the same as the one Limori had made to Jessica to bring an end to her marriage to Michael. It sent a cold knife of fear and guilt through my heart and, far from helping me to get a grip on my fear, made it worse. She looked deeply into my eyes. “God says to me now that if He were to take Michael away from you, you would turn your back on Him.” “That’s absurd,” I thought. “I love God.” But her words foreshadowed the events that would unfold at the end of the year. It was she who would take Michael away from me and I would indeed end up turning my back on her and on the God she had been trying to convince me she spoke for all these years. As unsettled as I was by these proclamations, I was also deeply concerned about my observations of Michael’s behaviour when he was around Limori.